At the centre of this story is a coven, which takes its name from then Liberal MP Peter Dutton\u2019s reference to a senior female journalist as a \u201cmad fucking witch\u201d. Their aim is to stop media profiting from hate speech.<\/p>\n
It began almost a decade ago during the #MeToo movement, when rage became a global language for women. Disclosure after disclosure exposed their abuse by powerful men, and they took to the streets in growing numbers around the world, because the violence was enduring and everywhere: in homes, on streets, in workplaces.<\/p>\n
The founder of Mad Fucking Witches, Jennie Hill, is clear about what drove her. \u201cTwelve\u00a0months before I started it, I\u2019d been sexually assaulted.\u201d<\/p>\n
As protests gained momentum in 2017, she was confronting silence. At the age of 50, attending a funeral, Hill was sexually assaulted by the friend of a relative. She stayed silent for two years to avoid fracturing the family.<\/p>\n
When she finally disclosed, she received the response so often used to protect perpetrators, limit fallout and bury these stories: agonising scrutiny and further silencing. The assault wasn\u2019t her first, she says, and \u201cthe trauma was double what it would otherwise have been, because everything came back from the first attack\u201d. At the age of 10, she was sexually abused by a priest at a summer camp. Even then, she understood the mechanics of power: no one would believe her.<\/p>\n
The Mad Fucking Witches did not begin as activists \u2013 for Hill, the intention was to support other women who had experienced abuse. It was supposed to be equal parts sweary, funny and comforting. \u201cIn those early years of MFW, it was a place to share, to rage, to hold each other\u2026 It actually saved me,\u201d she says. The group soon attracted more than 200,000 followers online because, as Hill puts it, \u201cpeople identified with the fury\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then, in 2019, 2GB radio host Alan Jones galvanised the MFW community. That August, Jones stated on air that New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern should have a \u201csock shoved down her throat\u201d and recommended then prime minister Scott Morrison give her a few \u201cbackhanders\u201d.<\/p>\n
MFW mobilised on Facebook. \u201cWe just put a post up saying, \u2018Is there anyone who\u2019d like to help us do this?\u2019\u201d says Hill. Volunteers researched advertisers and wrote en masse. The sheer volume of public pressure led advertiser after advertiser to pull money from the program.<\/p>\n
Advertisers didn\u2019t appreciate the volume of MFW missives, which endlessly sampled Jones\u2019s \u201cdisgusting commentary\u201d, says Hill. \u201cThere are a lot of companies who sent very angry, nasty messages and emails back to us saying things like \u2018Our staff, who are reading these emails, are really upset\u2019.\u201d Hill laughs at the irony of those messages being funded by the very companies who were taking offence. Her response was to point out their role: \u201c\u2018Look, we understand that and we don\u2019t like sending these things any more than you like receiving them. Literally, all you have to do is say you don\u2019t want your ads played during that show. That\u2019s it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill remembers Jones phoning her directly to ask the MFW to drop the campaign. He was emphatic that he didn\u2019t deserve it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlan. Alan. Alan … No one here at MFW thinks you\u2019re a personally violent person, but you have to understand that the things you say on air validate other men who are violent to continue their violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill says it was impossible to get a word in during that exchange: \u201cI\u2019m yelling at him, \u2018Alan. Alan. Alan.\u2019 And eventually he was quiet, so I said, \u2018No one here at MFW thinks you\u2019re a personally violent person, but you have to understand that the things you say on air validate other men who are violent to continue their violence.\u2019 He continued to tell me how many women he employed and how many loved him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost a year after those comments, the Australian Communications and Media Authority concluded that Jones had breached broadcasting decency standards. By this time, he had accumulated more than a decade of misconduct warnings, including ACMA\u2019s finding that his broadcasts leading up to the 2005 Cronulla race riots were \u201clikely to encourage violence or brutality\u201d and \u201cvilify people of Lebanese and Middle Eastern backgrounds\u201d. Linking broadcasting to harm was significant, as research clearly indicates that racist and misogynistic language validates and endorses violence.<\/p>\n
In 2020, Jones retired. Not because his audience abandoned him \u2013 he still held a 17 per cent market share \u2013 but because advertisers did.<\/p>\n
Since then, the MFW have targeted the likes of Sam Newman, Eddie McGuire and, in an ongoing project, the media monolith the group refers to as #NewsCorpse.<\/p>\n
This year they claimed another major victory. Kyle Sandilands, like Jones, built his career on outrage, riding out a steady stream of complaints, investigations and warnings. His hit show with Jackie \u201cO\u201d Henderson on KIIS 1065 ran aground after his cohost, complicit in his approach for 25\u00a0years, objected to his abuse.<\/p>\n
Months before, however, the show\u2019s attempt at a Melbourne launch had already redoubled a longstanding campaign by MFW. Volunteers on a #VileKyle mission bombarded the many advertisers listed on the MFW website, who pulled funding in large numbers. Both Sandilands and Henderson were in court this week with separate claims to rescue the $100 million, 10-year deals each signed in 2023, and their former employer, ARN, is countersuing.<\/p>\n
Court documents quote Sandilands saying of MFW: \u201cI\u2019ll have [private investigators] following everyone they\u2019ve ever known till I find some shit on these folks\u2026 They\u2019re a bunch of lunatics. They\u2019re actually very threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n
So successful was MFW, Hill says, that incoming ARN Media chief executive Michael Stephenson contacted them before he formally took the position.<\/p>\n
She believes Stephenson was not just concerned with the bottom line: \u201cI think he was appalled by things Kyle was doing. He also cared about the bullying of staff and things like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week, Stephenson told shareholders at the ARN Media annual general meeting that $26.4 million of its 2025 revenue declines were due to \u201cclients who had chosen not to advertise with ARN because of issues relating to brand safety\u201d.<\/p>\n
To this day, Hill is surprised by how effective the MFW campaigns have been. She says a high-profile journalist once rang after he said something nasty about a female politician. \u201cHe somehow found my phone number and rang me in a panic and\u00a0said, \u2018Please don\u2019t do it. Don\u2019t campaign on me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill\u2019s response was to make it clear that the MFW \u201conly run campaigns on people who are serial repeat offenders who don\u2019t apologise and make amends\u201d.<\/p>\n
For Hill, this is proof that they are cutting through. In a recent episode of the podcast Game Changers Radio, Marty Sheargold described being sacked from Southern Cross Austereo after comments he made about the Matildas soccer team. He suggested that once he knew the Witches were on his case, he was a goner.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople know the Witches are there, and we\u2019re ready to go,\u201d Hill says.<\/p>\n
She is confused by broadcasters who refuse to change\u00a0or make amends. \u201cIt could be so simple,\u201d she says. \u201cNone of them took us seriously until very recently.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of what our witches do is for free, and most of it is quite low paid. They can\u2019t imagine a world in which people do things for genuinely altruistic reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill knows this kind of campaigning cannot happen without the sheer number of people who are willing to boycott and lobby the money. It\u2019s using capitalism to unmoor the arch capitalists \u2013 the commercial talkback model Hill describes as \u201cpunch down profit\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s been a media model for quite a long time, and I think it\u2019s probably been an extremely successful media model\u2026 What MFW have done is to demonstrate that if that\u2019s your media model, we\u2019re not going to let you profit from it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill, who tells me she grew up in a small country town, says: \u201cA lot of this is about class \u2013 maybe even more than feminism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commercial radio talkback hosts occupy elite positions while cultivating audiences shut out of the halls of power, using the familiar device of \u201cus versus them\u201d to bridge the gap and encouraging solidarity by referring to listeners as \u201cbattlers\u201d from \u201cstruggle street\u201d.<\/p>\n
The late-\u201990s \u201ccash for comments\u201d scandal exposed how this dynamic has been exploited. The Australian Broadcasting Authority revealed companies were paying stars such as Jones and John Laws for favourable commentary presented as independent opinion. In his own defence, Laws insisted: \u201cThe battlers have always known I have been getting money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ultimately, Laws was right. This degradation of broadcasting ethics had almost no impact on audience numbers.<\/p>\n
Given that loyalty, and the money and careers at stake, MFW\u2019s work isn\u2019t without serious risks for the coven \u2013 violent threats are common both on- and off-air within the industry. Hill says she\u2019s received them from right-wing anti-women groups, and recalls a chilling email from a current high-profile media personality. \u201cHe didn\u2019t like something we said and so he sent me an email with my last three addresses on it, saying he knew where to find me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill sparks up when I ask if she has enough energy to continue the fight. \u201cWe\u2019re all very tired. We\u2019re thinking about our next campaign,\u201d she says, adding that it may not be against an individual.<\/p>\n
To that repeated criticism that the witches just hate men? \u201cMen don\u2019t realise that this is for them too,\u201d Hill says. \u201cThe system is hurting everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on
\n May 9, 2026 as “The witches are coming”.<\/p>\n
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